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Metal leaf, also called composition leaf or schlagmetal, is a thin foil used for decoration. Metal leaf can come in many different shades. Some metal leaf may look like gold leaf but does not contain any real gold. This is often referred to as imitation leaf.
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Metals that are made into metal leaf need to be highly malleable. They can be pounded into sheets well below a micrometre in thickness without breaking or tearing. The typical thickness of gold leaf is about 100 nanometres or 0.0001 mm1. When made by hand, small pieces of metal are placed between sheets of parchment and pounded repeatedly with wooden mallets. As the metal thins out, it forms large sheets. These sheets are divided and the process repeated. The final sheets of metal are trimmed, cut to various sizes, and sandwiched between sheets of paper to protect them. At a thickness of 100 nm, one square metre of gold leaf corresponds to 0.1 cubic centimetre or just 2 grams of gold. In Imperial measurements, one ounce (28.34 g) of gold corresponds to about 200 square feet (about 20 m2) of gold leaf.
Metal leaf is most often used for decoration. Before the discovery of electroplating, it was the only cost effective way to gild statues, cornices, the exterior of domes or other objects. An example of gold leaf exterior use is the dome and statue atop the main building of the University of Notre Dame.
Gold and silver leafs are considered non-toxic when labeled as food-grade and so can be used to decorate food (such as cake) or drink. They can be often found in a number of desserts including chocolates and Mithai; Vark is a Hindi term for culinary silver leaf. In India gold or silver leaf is often used to cover the top of a main dish before serving, especially at weddings. Gold in particular is sometimes used in fruit jelly snacks. It was also used in coffee, especially during Japan's "bubble economy". In Kanazawa, where Japan's gold leaf production was centred, gold leaf shops and workshops sell green tea and hard candy with gold leaf within.
Danziger Goldwasser ("Danzig Goldwater"), a liqueur incorpoating gold leaf fragments that give a snow-like effect when shaken, has been made in what is now Gdańsk in Poland since 1598, and recently other brands such as Goldschläger have used this effect.
Gold leaf is gold that is beaten into extremely thin sheets. The thin gold sheets are commonly used for gilding. Gold leaf is available in a wide variety of carats and shades. 23-carat gold is the most commonly used.
Gold leaf is sometimes confused with metal leaf but they are different products. The term metal leaf is normally used for thin sheets of metal of any color that do not contain any real Carat gold. 24 Carats is pure gold. Real yellow gold leaf is about 92% pure gold. Silver colored white gold is approximately 50% pure gold.
Layering gold leaf over a surface is sometimes called gold leafing, and is a very common form of gilding.
Gold leaf has traditionally been most popular and most common in its use as gilding material for the decoration of art including statues like the Chryselephantine sculpture of Ancient Greece or the 10th century Golden Madonna of Essen. Illuminated manuscripts often contained much gold and silver (the later badly subject to oxidization). In medieval panel paintings the "sky" background area, especially in religious paintings, was conventionally made of gold leaf until more realistic conventions were adopted, first in Trecento Italy, and later in Early Netherlandish painting. This style is known as "gold ground"; the gold was usually decorated with patterns made by stamps. Gold was also often used for haloes, and for highlights and patterns on clothing in paintings. Gilt bronze is a term for statues made of bronze which are then gilded; this is a very ancient process found in many cultures, sometimes using "mechanical" processes of hammering the leaf into place, but also other processes such as mercury gilding, known since ancient times.
Picture frames used to hold paintings and other works have also been gilded since medieval times and are the most frequent use of gold leaf in art in modern times. Modern "Gold" frames made without leafing are also available for a considerably smaller price, but traditionally some form of gold or metal leaf was preferred when possible and gold leafed (or silver leafed) moulding is still commonly available from many of the companies that produce commercially-available moulding for use as picture frames.
The above article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the copyrighted Wikipedia "Gold leaf" article.
